Effects of smoking cessation intervention on alcohol consumption among African American light smokers

Excessive alcohol use is the third leading preventable cause of death in the US annually. Although effective alcohol control policies to reduce excessive use have been identified, many of these have eroded over time or face political opposition. Given the strong association between alcohol and tobacco use, another potential mechanism to reduce excessive drinking is through tobacco interventions. The current study used data from the Kick It at Swope II study which examined the combined effect of nicotine replacement therapy and behavioral therapy (health education (HE) or motivational interviewing (MI)) on smoking cessation in 755 African American light (less than 11 cigarettes/day) smokers. Only the effect of behavioral therapy was examined since the original study found smokers in HE were twice as likely to quit than those in MI. This study examined three alcohol behaviors: binge drinking status and frequency, and average number of drinks/day. Significant effects were found for binge drinking at week 8 with the HE group reporting significantly lower binge drinking than the MI group (p=0.045), but these effects decayed by week 26. Quitting smoking explained less than 5% of the relationship between behavior therapy and alcohol outcomes; this mediation was not statistically significant. Participants who quit smoking early in the program were less likely to binge drink at week 8 (p=0.035) than those who either quit later (after week 8) or not at all. The relationship between timing of quitting smoking and other alcohol outcomes were not statistically significant. Implications of these findings will be discussed.